Q&A with James McAvoy

The Last King of Scotland's story is as old as humankind: Boy leaves home, meets charismatic despot, and falls into blind love; boy feels pangs of regret when despot turns out to be genocidal maniac; love dies; boy gets tortured nearly to death, hung by steel hooks from the ceiling of an airport duty-free shop; woozy, bloody, and wiser, boy escapes and sneaks back home.

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It's one hell of a rousing picture, truly, starring Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin and James McAvoy as the boy, a young Scot off to Uganda with his newly minted medical degree seeking adventure, the chance to do good, and pussy. Whitaker will get the Oscar buzz -- deserved: he is stunning -- but without McAvoy's savvy brilliance, Last King would play like Dada Dearest. With four more movies on the way (including, in 2007, Atonement), the twenty-seven-year-old McAvoy is about to become a household name -- or at least the next Jude Law.

JM: Yeah, there's a lotta stuff comin' out. I didn't really time it like that. You take what comes. You get offered a job and then you finish it and then you get offered another job, and you go, "Well, I'd better take that, 'cause there might not be any work for a while." You do that and then you get offered another job, and you go, "Well, that would be only my third job in a row, so I'd better take it 'cause I might not work for a while." And by the fifth job, you think, Oh, no -- shit. That's a little bit of overexposure, and people go, "Oh, fuckin' hell -- here he comes again."

ESQ: Were you worried about getting blown off the screen by Forest Whitaker?

JM: Nah. As soon as you start thinkin' about any of that, you start to be a little bit strategical -- "How can I claim some focus back?" And that's not the way to go about it. You've got to play every moment truthfully, concentrate on the truth of every moment, play the scenes the way you would normally, whilst in the back of your head going, Holy shit -- this is amazing. The great thing about Forest is, as much as you resent his character and his Method thing -- that can be quite an insular process -- he was still interested in playing the relationship. All you ever hope to do is work with a good actor, so how can people go, "Oh, God, you must have been so intimidated"? No, you're like, "Fuckin' hell -- this is great." I'd have been more worried if I was workin' with someone I was dominating 'cause they were shit.

ESQ: You studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, but you also must've learned a great deal about acting from working on Band of Brothers back in 2001 with David Schwimmer.

JM: I think I might have smelled him on set once, got a taste of him in the air one day. I turned around and he was gone.